On the event, called „Street-Science“, the iGEM-Team 2012 of Bielefeld University invited people to isolate DNA from vegetable and fruits. Furthermore games like „Spitzen stecken“ (sticking pipette-tips) were provided for kids and who ever wanted to have a try or challenge one of our team. The concern of our team was to talk about synthetic biology, show its opportunities and help dismantle prejudice against it. To get a Feedback about the event, we planned an evaluation survey, which the participants could fill out anonymously. The results we got from their suggestions, ideas and critics, should help us reflect unbiased about the work we had done. Moreover, based on the questions of the survey, it was to find out whether we had successfully submitted our project and the means of synthetic biology to the people. In addition we wanted to know what impression our team left on the participants.

Overall, the surveys were filled out by 24 participants, divided in 33% of women and 66% of men. Most of the participants were students, pupils and workers.

Figure 1 Occupation of the participants. 25% of the participants were pupils and 29% were students and 21% were workers. Altogether, the participants had an positive impression on synthetic biology and in all cases participants were judging the happening as very well run and would visit a „Street-Science“-event again.

Regarding synthetic biology, over 50% of the participants considered „Street-Science“ as interesting. Moreover 41,67% of the participants found this event informative and 20,83% indicated, that this event was exceptionally.

Figure 2 Question: How did you find "Street-Science" regarding to synthetic Biology? 58,33 of the participants found "Street-Science" regarding to synthetic Biology interesting and 41,67% found it informative, 20,83% found Street-Science exeptionally and 33,33% found it innovative. Moreover 29,17% of the participants found it cosmopolitan and 41,67% found this event helpful.

They stated all of their questions, could be answered and no questions were left open.

Figure 3 Question: Could all your questions to synthetic Biology be answered? 48% indicated, that everything could be answered, 38% of the participants indicated that almost could be answered, and 14% indicated, that the most of the question could be answered.

Up to the point of the event the participants hadn’t a large relation to synthetic biology, but nevertheless they were interested in the „Street-Science“-events and already had spent some thoughts on synthetic biology.

Figure 4 The participants can choose from the scale 1(absolutely not true) till 7 (absolutely true) to evaluate the following statements. The values are average values.

The happening did alter their attitude about synthetic biology slightly to the positive and all claimed to got informed about the iGEM-project as well and were positively surprised. Almost half of respondents reported, that they will continue to pursue the iGEM-competition.

Figure 5 Question "How did you find "Street Science" regarding to synthetic biology?“ The participants can choose from scale 1 (absolutely not true) till 7 (totally true). 4,21 is the average value of the participants, who are positively suprised about the project and about synthetic biology.

Several proposals were given, that we should plan more room for the event and do even more experiments at a time. Also the people ask for a donation box. In general the people considered that they had met a group of friendly students, which are able to discuss about problems and questions of synthetic biology. Furthermore it was proposed to make an event like „Street-Science“ at schools.

55px